End-to-End, Chapter III
Path
End-to-End by Manuel Cabezudo and Amalia Márquez, Chapter III
The Island of La Palma. I’m actually starting to believe we’re going to reach the end of this trip. We sleep in Caldera de Taburiente, a shepherd's’ cave. We talk to each other in the dark. Tomorrow we’ll start walking down the mountain for two days. Before leaving, Amalia shows me the wounds on her feet. She doesn’t want to look at them. “They aren’t too big”, I lie, “they’ll be gone in no time”.
We pass through the Volcano Route, the Fuencaliente Lighthouse and Teneguía, the last volcano that erupted in the 70s. The doubts that haunted us have eroded away. We move forward.
The island of El Hierro. The last one on the map, the most virgin of them all. According to the map of Potolomeo, this island is known as the island of the Meridian or ‘the end of the world’. It’s definitely been the end of the world we knew this month. We talk and laugh the entire time. Amalia is stronger than ever. I know her feet still hurt but she keeps walking. Now that we can see the end, we’ve entered a bubble. We’ve never felt more strong.
We find an incredible bay. We bathe naked from the jetty by the Cliffs of Julan. I feel the salt water healing the wounds on my feet. We submerge in the water for as long as we can. On this jetty we have two options to end our trip, either return back along the same road, or cross El Mar de las Calmas. Retracing the road was never a possibility: we already burned those bridges. All those questions.
We signal some fishermen and ask them to take us to La Restinga, a fishing village in the South of the island. We cross the sea, exhausted and happy. From the boat we can see everything we walked, and we are speechless. Our skipper, Vicente’s mouth falls open when we explain our journey to him. We don’t mention the baby.
Photography. Amalia Márquez and Manuel Federico
Words. Leti Sala
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Traveller/s
Manuel Cabezudo
Sustainable Turism Entrepeneur
Ever since he was little Manuel has had a strong bond with nature and especially with the sea. As his birthplace strongly marked his personality and character, Manuel started promoting ideas and projects enabling responsible and sustainable tourism in the Canary Islands.
@el_warungAmalia Márquez
Photographer
Amalia was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1984. She has a degree in Pedagogy and it was in her university days she become interested in analog photography. She moved to Barcelona in 2010where she participates in collective exhibitions.
